Monday, October 10, 2005

Masters of the Semantic Web

Masters of the Semantic Web :: Bio-IT World: "'The advent of the Semantic Web is providing the life sciences community with the standards and tools needed to build integrative informatics systems,' says John Reynders, information officer, discovery & development informatics, at Eli Lilly. 'We are very interested in the [Semantic Web standards] and view them as essential tools in cracking the heterogeneous data integration challenge facing our drug-hunters here at Lilly.'"

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Northrop Grumman Acquires Proprietary Software from Tucana Technologies

Northrop Grumman Acquires Proprietary Software from Tucana Technologies: "Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) announced that it has purchased the rights to proprietary software developed by Tucana Technologies, a software-products company specializing in using semantic technologies to integrate enterprise information. Northrop Grumman will market these technologies to government and commercial users seeking more efficient methods of sharing business data.

Tucana's software was created for advanced applications that use 'metadata,' or data which describes other information, to integrate information from different sources. This technology is based upon standards established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to form the basis of the 'Semantic Web,' which is the evolving next-generation of the Web. The Semantic Web is being developed through use of common protocol languages so that machines can find, sort and classify information more efficiently.

With the explosive expansion of the digital-data domain, the defense, intelligence, healthcare and financial industries are looking at semantic applications and technologies with great promise for addressing the challenge of "knowledge discovery." Tucana's technologies will enable a new generation of software applications that will allow for the organization and mining of vast amounts of data and deliver the ability to rapidly derive knowledge from previously uncorrelated events. The user communities will move from information processing to knowledge discovery."

Sunday, September 04, 2005

NewsForge | Explore the Semantic Web using Piggy Bank

Explore the Semantic Web using Piggy Bank: "If you've ever wondered what all the excitement surrounding the Resource Description Framework (RDF) or the Semantic Web is about, then I have good news. You can explore both without leaving your Web browser, using Piggy Bank.

Piggy Bank is a Java-powered Firefox extension developed by MIT's SIMILE project, a group that is working on a suite of Semantic Web applications and tools. Piggy Bank runs in the background while you browse the Web in your normal fashion. However, when you hit upon a page with an RDF link, a small 'data coin' icon appears in the Firefox status bar. Click on it and Piggy Bank will import and parse the accompanying RDF data. You can search through it via Piggy Bank's built-in browser interface, or save it for later use."

Saturday, June 25, 2005

XML.com: Introducing SKOS

XML.com: Introducing SKOS: "SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), recently introduced by the XML.comW3C, is a model for expressing knowledge organization systems in a machine-understandable way, within the framework of the Semantic Web. The SKOS Core Vocabulary is an RDF (Resource Description Framework) application. Using RDF allows data to be linked and merged with other RDF data by Semantic Web applications. SKOS Core provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes, including thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies, glossaries, and other types of controlled vocabulary. This article will provide some examples for using SKOS and discuss the general principles of building such knowledge bases."

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

What is the Semantic Web about, Tim Berners-Lee?

Consortiuminfo.org Consortium Standards Bulletin- June 2005: "The goal of the Semantic Web initiative is to create a universal medium for the exchange of data where data can be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people. The Semantic Web is designed to smoothly interconnect personal information management, enterprise application integration, and the global sharing of commercial, scientific and cultural data. We are talking about data here, not human documents.

The Semantic Web is not about the meaning of English documents. It's not about marking up existing HTML documents to let a computer understand what they say. It's not about the artificial intelligence areas of machine learning or natural language understanding -- they use the word semantics with a different meaning.

It is about the data which currently is in relational databases, XML documents, spreadsheets, and proprietary format data files, and all of which would be useful to have access to as one huge database."

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web

Quick Guide to Publishing a Thesaurus on the Semantic Web: "The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries [Semantic Web Activity]. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) [RDF], which provides a simple data formalism for talking about things, their properties, inter-relationships, and categories (classes). For an overview of RDF, see [RDF Concepts]

This document describes in brief how to express the content and structure of a thesaurus, and metadata about a thesaurus, in RDF. Using RDF allows your data to be linked to and/or merged with other RDF data by semantic web applications. In practice, this means that data sources can be distributed across the web in a decentralised way, but still be meaningfully composed and integrated by applications, often in novel and unanticipated ways."

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Gavilian Research Announces 2005 Metadata Solutions Report

CRM Today: Gavilian Research Announces 2005 Metadata Solutions Report: "Gavilan Research Associates, a provider of metadata management research and vendor/product comparisons, is pleased to announce the immediate availability of an important metadata research study called the 2005 MetaData Solutions Report(tm).

This unique, innovative product survey was conducted in early 2005 and was targeted at enterprise software vendors who market themselves as 'metadata management solutions'. The Survey also targeted software companies who offer metadata products in the data warehousing, business intelligence, knowledge management, enterprise architecture or taxonomy/ontology markets. Each software vendor was sent the same comprehensive list of over 100 questions, which comprise all of the typical features, functions, and issues that Global 5000 companies face when organizing a metadata management environment."

Monday, March 28, 2005

Software AG Delivers Further Building Block for Service-oriented Architecture

Software AG delivers further building block for service-oriented architecture: "[Johannesburg, 24 March 2005] - Software AG has announced the worldwide release of its Enterprise Information Integrator (EII) version 2.1, an important building block in implementing a service-oriented architecture.

EII V2.1 is the first globally available information integration product to use Semantic Web technology. By dynamically combining the meaning and context of business data with the rules that govern its use, Enterprise Information Integrator provides business leaders with the resources to make faster decisions based on real-time information availability."

Friday, March 25, 2005

RNA Project to Create Language for Scientists Worldwide

RNA project to create language for scientists worldwide: "Creating the RNA Ontology will require incorporating the methods and vocabularies of chemists, molecular biologists, genomicists, information scientists and structural biologists. To help sort out the difficult conceptual issues, the consortium will organize frequent face-to-face meetings of RNA scientists. Members will also report their progress at the annual RNA Society meetings and receive feedback from the wider community of researchers.

The ontology team will identify all RNA motifs, or repeated patterns, mentioned in the literature or appearing in databases, to agree upon and write a definition for each motif. The consortium's work will be accessible on the Web to the various RNA research communities using servers hosted at BGSU. "

Monday, February 14, 2005

Web Service API and the Semantic Web

Web Service API and the Semantic Web @ SOA WEB SERVICES JOURNAL: "As the Semantic Web gains momentum, it's important for Web service developers to keep abreast of its technologies and prepare for a change in their industry.

This article looks at how the Semantic Web applies to Web services, including what specifications are under development and how you might prepare for integration with future semantic applications.

What Is the Semantic Web and How Does It Impact Web Services?
The current World Wide Web presents large volumes of information in a format tailored for viewing by people. A person can surf from link to link, query search engines, or attempt to reach sites by domain name. While the pages retrieved are appealing to humans, to the software that processes the contents they are no more than a string of random characters.

Software programs cannot load a random document, Web page, or file and understand the contents of that document. While the software could make assumptions based on HTML or XML tags, a human programmer would have to get involved and determine the meaning, or semantics, of each tag. From a computer's perspective, the World Wide Web is a garbled mess. Luckily, there's a solution: the Semantic Web."